


Geheimnisträger

by shiromori



Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Holocaust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-09
Updated: 2012-12-09
Packaged: 2017-11-20 18:47:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/588526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiromori/pseuds/shiromori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Sometimes in this life, you get a moment... a time when everything lines up.  When anything is possible.  When suddenly you can make things happen.  God help us if we take that moment... and God forgive us if we don't."</i>
</p><p>In the hell of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Erik Lensherr struggles to survive, but when by chance he meets a young Sinti girl named Magda, he finds a reason to live.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ratcreature](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ratcreature/gifts).



_The coin is a weight in his pocket; it is a weight on his conscience, like the weight of a body, dragging him down into the mud under its burden.  But he will not be rid of it.  It comes at his call now, like a faithful friend.  It's easier than a thought.  At night, when the other men are deep in the dreamless sleep of exhaustion, he takes it out.  He doesn't need to be able to see it in the dark.  He can feel its shape with his other sense, feel its hard, bright edge.  He makes it pass between his fingers in weaving formations, slow and flawlessly steady, he can hear again the doctor's jubilant exclamation.  “Wonderful!”  He can hear again the sound of a gun firing.  In his dreams, he imagines calling not to the coin, but the gun._

_Why didn't he try to move the gun?_

 

Erik is fifteen.  He might be sixteen.  Time has ceased to have any real meaning for him.  The nights are long and cold, and the days are spent at the doctor's mercy.  Erik never knows what the doctor will expect from him.  They are testing his limits, Schmidt says, but Erik doesn't know them.  He only knows that failure is unacceptable.  Failure is punished.  Fear is Erik's most constant companion.  He goes to sleep with it at night and wakes with it each morning.  It's not pain that he fears, or death.  Death holds no more horror for him, no more pity, no more disgust.  It has become too familiar in its ugliness.  What Erik fears is that he will never leave this place – that it will make him into something unrecognizable to himself.  Sometimes, he fears it already has.  He has been made-over from the corpse of himself like Frankenstein's monster.  They are all corpses here, but some of them stubbornly still walk.

The first time he killed a man, he was thirteen years old.  His power was wild, like a snarling beast straining against a leash that a boy had no hope of holding, and he hadn't tried.  He might claim that he was not in his right mind - he had just seen his mother murdered in front of him – but Erik will never claim it.  In that moment, as young as he was, he'd had no other thought but to destroy, to _punish_ , and he had to hand the power to do it.  He'd meant to do it.  He wanted those soldiers to scream, wanted them to suffer the way they had made his family suffer, the way they had made _him_ suffer.  He wanted their pain and their horror, wanted to pay them back a hundred fold for what they had done, and when their skulls cracked and caved like eggshells under the crushing pressure of their own helmets, Erik felt no remorse.

It's this beast that the doctor is interested in.  He calls it “rage”, and it won't come at Erik's call until he is pushed beyond all endurance.  The doctor finds ways to push him – more cruel, more inventive – until the rage is always there like a charge, prickling just beneath his skin, like the threatening buzz of the electrified fence that holds him in.  He had made it bend to him, once, and when he walks past it, going between the dark, dirty prisoners' barracks and the doctor's sterile laboratory, hearing its moans and creaks, he imagines it leaning towards him like an affectionate friend.  Or maybe he is not imagining it.  The fence has been a friend to some.  Erik has seen men at the end of their endurance stumble to embrace it.  The guards don't stop them.  The other prisoners don't try.  There isn't a one of them who hasn't considered it.  The thought has crossed Erik's mind, and he doesn't know why he doesn't just do it.  He doesn't know what he is hoping for, but every day, he turns away and keeps walking.

 

**************************

 

It is at the fence that Erik first sees her.  There are no girls on his side of the fence and she, like him, is thin and stooped.  Her raggedly shorn hair is covered by a red kerchief, and it is that one bright spot of colour that catches Erik's attention; there is so little colour here.  She has something in her hands – a bundle half concealed beneath her blouse – and as Erik watches, she dashes up to the fence and throws the package over.  Almost as soon as it touches the ground, a man scrambles forward to snatch it up.  He must have been waiting and watching.  His eyes meet Erik's warily, and for a moment he stands frozen, ready to fight for his prize, but when Erik doesn't move, the man stuffs the bundle under his threadbare shirt and hurries away.

Erik turns to see that the girl is still standing at the fence, and she is looking at him.  “I'm sorry,” she says.  “I don't have anything else.”  She must be smuggling food, he thinks.  She is taking an incredible risk.  If she is caught, she'll be shot.

“I don't need it,” Erik answers.  He is one of the lucky ones.  He always has enough to eat, if only so that he will be strong enough for Doktor Schmidt's experiments.

“I work in the infirmary,” the girl says unexpectedly.  “I've seen you... going to the doctor's office.”  There is an unspoken question in her eyes; there are rumours whispered in the camp about what goes on in the medical block.

Erik averts his eyes.  What can he say to her?  He is not without his scars.  The fingers of his left hand are slightly crooked now, not quite properly healed.  Doktor Schmidt had broken three of them with a hammer before Erik – his arms tied to the arms of his chair – had been able to summon the focus to stop him.  Below his collar is a scattering of shiny pink scars where he had been splashed with hot lead because the doctor wanted to see if Erik could still manipulate metal in its liquid form.

Every lesson has been painful, but Erik _is_ learning.

The girl shifts from foot to foot anxiously.  Every minute she stands at the fence she is in danger, but something keeps her there – the same undefinable impulse that stops Erik from turning and walking away.  “My name is Magda,” she says a little hesitantly, and then in a rush, “I'll try to come tomorrow if you – ”

“You!  Rat!  Get away from there!”

They both flinch.  The guard raises his rifle, and Magda darts away, running with her head ducked down to make herself a smaller target, but the guard is taking aim through the fence, and she will never make it.  Erik doesn't think.  He reaches out with his hands, reaches out with his other sense and closes on the barrel of the rifle.  It jerks in the guard's hands, and the shot flies harmlessly wide.  He staggers with the force of the recoil, thrown off balance, and it is all the time Magda needs to disappear.

Erik breathes a sigh of relief.  The guard, his face flushed and ugly with anger and embarrassment turns to look at Erik who has witnessed the gypsy girl make a fool of him.  “What are you looking at, Jew?” he snarls, and the butt of his rifle slams into Erik's shoulder, knocking him down.  Erik struggles to right himself.  His hands and knees slip and slide in the cold, stinking mud.  “Filthy pig!” the guard mutters before stalking off, and Erik feels a gobbet of phlegm strike his cheek.  He doesn't care.  By the time he gets to his feet, he is smiling.

This time, he reached for the gun.

 

 

“What happened?” Doktor Schmidt asks when Erik arrives in his office covered in mud. 

“I fell,” Erik replies.  Magda is a secret he doesn't want to share with the doctor.  The doctor may not believe him, but he is more concerned with Erik tracking filth into his immaculate office than he is with Erik's person.  He orders Erik to strip and sends him to wash while he sends an orderly to fetch some clean clothes.  Erik turns on the faucet full blast and sluices the mud and the grime from his skin.  He bends down so he can stick his head under the stream.  The water is freezing, but Erik doesn't mind.  This is the first chance he's had to bathe in at least a month, and running water from an actual sink is an untold luxury.

He emerges from the washroom dripping and naked, shivering a little, and there is a pile of clothing waiting for him folded neatly on the chair across from the doctor's desk.  Erik pulls them on hurriedly – a cotton shirt that sticks to his damp skin and a pair of dark woollen trousers.  There is no underwear.  These are the only clothes he has worn in almost two years besides the striped uniform he was given when he arrived.  He doesn't want to think about where they came from.  Putting them on, he can almost imagine that he is human again.

“An improvement,” the doctor says and gestures for Erik to sit.  Erik does, warily.  The doctor never gives gifts – even self-serving ones – unless he wants something in exchange, and Erik doesn't have to wait long.  “I want to show you something,” Doktor Schmidt says, and he reaches under his desk and pulls out something dark and bulky.  He lays it down in front of Erik.  “What do you think of this?” he asks.

Erik stares in puzzlement at the heap of heavy cloth with the yellow star sewn on its front.  “It's a coat...” he answers, and the doctor's expression tightens slightly.

“Erik.  Don't be disingenuous.” 

Erik looks at the coat again, and he has a flash of understanding.  He can feel it – what the doctor is looking for.  “There are coins sewn into the lining,” he says.  “Silver Reichsmarks.  Ten of them.”

The doctor smiles.  He already knew.  He slits open the silk lining with a knife and there they are, the coins, stitched carefully under the lapels.  “Clever, isn't it?” he says.  

Erik says nothing.

“The SS have very little appreciation for cleverness and even less imagination, but something like this couldn't fool you, could it, Erik?”  The doctor is silent, expectant, until Erik answers, “No.”

“No.  Of course not.”  The doctor pauses again, and Erik wishes that he would just say whatever it is that he has poised on those saturnine smiling lips, but he is not prepared for what the doctor says when he finally speaks.  “Unterscharführer Wolff's unit is short-staffed.  With the increased number of transports coming in, they're in need of more hands.  I recommended you for the job.  You are, after all, rather uniquely suited.  Think of it as practice,” the doctor smiles.  “And when there are no transports, you can return to me here, and we can continue your... shall we say, 'education'.”

“Transports...?” Erik says.  There is a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach as if he has swallowed a stone.  He remembers the choking darkness of the cattle car, the suffocating press of bodies.  He remembers his mother's hand gripping his, painfully tight, and then being wrenched from her side.  She screams and screams...

“ – to the kapo.”  The doctor is holding out a folded note, and Erik realizes that he has not heard anything that was said to him.  The doctor seems to realize it as well because he repeats a little tersely, “Report to unit 57-B and give this note to the kapo.  He'll direct you from there.  It's already been arranged.”

 

**************************

 

The kapo's name is Leibowitz, and he is Hungarian.  He is an older man, and his accent is strange to Erik's ears.  “So you're the replacement,” he says after he reads the doctor's note.  He looks Erik up and down.  “Hmph.  How old are you?” 

“Eighteen,” Erik answers automatically, and the kapo continues to stare at him wordlessly until he admits, “... Fifteen.”  The kapo shakes his head, muttering to himself, and Erik thinks he hears “ _goddamn kid_ ”, but he can't be sure.

Leibowitz takes him down a long, empty hallway and up an unlit flight of stairs that open into what looks like an attic.  There are rows of bunks crowded as close as possible beneath the steeply slanted sides of the roof, and even so, there is very little space left over in the long, narrow room for anything else.  With a shock, Erik realizes that there are actual mattresses on the bunks.  There are pillows and warm blankets.  There are a few other men in the room, sitting on the bunks.  One is smoking.  Another two are playing cards.  Where did they get cards?  They all look up when Erik comes into the room with Leibowitz.  There is a moment of uncertain silence, and then one of the men – the one who is smoking - says to Leibowitz, “A kid?  They sent us a kid to replace Székely?  How's he going to work the ovens?”

“He isn't,” Leibowitz answers shortly.  “Wolff wants him for the Goldjuden.”

There is a general outcry at that, and the man who had spoken before says, “Is he serious?  They're killing them faster than we can burn them as it is!”

“You want to take it up with Wolff?” Leibowitz snaps back, and that ends the argument, though there is still some quiet grumbling.  “Pick a bunk,” the kapo advises Erik, and to the rest of them, he says, “Try to get some rest.  I hear there's another group coming in tonight.”

When the kapo leaves, Erik looks around.  The nearest empty bunk is next to the man who had complained, and he says, “Keep walking,” staring up at Erik with barely concealed resentment.

“Just leave him, Glasz,” says one of the other men, and to Erik, “Hey, kid, you Hungarian?  What's your name?”

“Lensherr...” Erik answers which prompts a sound of contempt from Glasz.  “Fucking Germans...” the man says, and he drops the butt of his cigarette on the floor and crushes it beneath his boot.  “They sent us a fucking German.”

“What difference does it make?” the other man says.  “German, Hungarian, Pole – you think the Nazis give a damn?  A Yid's a Yid.  We're all the same to them.”

Glasz looks away, but his jaw is tight, and Erik knows he hasn't made a friend.

“I'm Weisz,” says the other man, “and that's  Kalman and Zerkovitz.”  He nods to the two men who had been playing cards.  They've already gone back to their game.  “You'll meet the rest later.  You can take Székely's bunk.  Kapo's right; you should get some sleep if you can.  You're in for a hell of a night.”

 

 

Erik doesn't remember drifting off to sleep, but he is shaken roughly awake some time later by Weisz.  “Time to go to work.  Hurry up and get downstairs,” he says, and then he's gone and Erik is scrambling to keep up with him.  He nearly trips on the stairs.  His wooden shoes are awkward and ill-fitting.  They go down another flight of stairs and into a wide, open room.  It is chaos.  There are men, women, and children crowded nearly on top of each other, all in various stages of undressing, while SS guards and prisoners move among them, giving instructions.

“Be sure to tie your shoes together so that you don't lose them.”

“Remember the number of your hook so that you can retrieve your belongings later.”

“The faster you undress and shower, the sooner you will be reunited with your families.  There will be soup and coffee waiting for you afterwards.”

“Have your personal documents ready so that you can be assigned work according to your qualifications.”

“What...?” Erik starts to say, but he is made speechless by what he is witnessing, by the cruel duplicity of it.  These are old men, women, small children.  They can't possibly work.  And if they can't work...

“Keep it together, Lensherr,” Weisz mutters under his breath, and then he says to the room at large, “Please collect all your valuables and turn them in for safe-keeping.  They will be returned to you after your shower.”  Like the others, Weisz begins moving among the crowd, collecting watches and wallets, earrings and broaches.  “Your ring, too,” he says to one elderly woman who doesn't want to part with her wedding band.  “You won't need it in the shower.”  Reluctantly, she twists it from her finger, her eyes filling with tears.  She has to fight to remove it.  Erik trails after Weisz in a daze, taking things as they are thrust at him.  He knows where he needs to go.  He can feel the presence of gold and silver in the room, more rich, more pure than the steel zippers and eyelets, the brass buttons and belt buckles.  He lets it call him, lets everything else fade out of focus.  It's the only thing he can do. 

People are being herded into the showers, now, men and women all together with no thought to modesty.  “Remember to wash thoroughly.  Even one louse can spread disease.”  They are jostling each other.  There are too many people and not enough room.  Erik hears a mother call out for her daughter to stay close. 

“Wait... wait,” he says with a growing horror because he knows what comes next, and Weisz, at his side again, hisses, “Shut up.  You knew this was going to happen.” 

The heavy door is closed and barred, but Erik can still hear the muffled voices of the people inside; they are rising now in panic.  They are screaming.  The door shudders with the force of bodies clamouring against it.  Its tremors are like a faltering heartbeat that only Erik can hear. 

“Sonderkommando, gather up these clothes,” Unterschärfuhrer Wolff orders, and the men, like automatons, go to work. Erik doesn't move. He stands paralysed. He cannot help those people, but neither can he bring himself to turn his back callously on their cries and prayers. God may not be listening, but Erik will. It is the least he can do.  Already, it is starting to grow more quiet, and the silence is more terrible than the screams. 

“Come on.  Come _on_ ,” Weisz says, giving Erik a shove when he doesn't move right away.  He is aware of the overseer watching the newcomer.  Weisz thrusts an armful of shoes at Erik, all neatly tied together by their owners to make it easier for their murderers to steal them.  “Take these outside,” he says, and he looks down at Erik's feet in their rough wooden shoes.  “And try to find yourself a good pair of boots.” 

Erik does.  _I am wearing a dead man's boots_ , he thinks.  _I am wearing a dead man's clothes_ , but his feet are dry and he is warm for the first time since he can remember.  And he is not the only one.  He sees Kalman trade his own threadbare jacket for a better one.  Glasz finds a little loaf of dark rye bread hidden in a woman's purse, and he tucks it away for himself.  The men work quickly with pitiless efficiency, and Erik wonders how many times they have done this to make them so inured to the horror of it.  Can he turn himself off the way they do?  Does he even want to? 

But all of it up until now has only been a test, because they are opening the door and the bodies... oh God, the bodies... 

Erik can't help himself.  He doubles over and is sick.  He wretches until there is nothing in his stomach to bring up but bile, and he is weak and shaking.  There are tears running down his face.  The Unterschärfuhrer only laughs derisively.  “Don't you think it's a lovely sight, Lensherr?” he says.  “Maybe you would like a closer look, hmn?”  He hauls Erik up by the arm and drags him over.  The floor of the shower is like a lattice of flesh.  The prisoners drag out the bodies one by one, but there are so many.  As Erik watches, some of the men begin shearing off the long hair of the women and girls and collecting it in heaps – just another commodity.  

“Doktor Schmidt tells me you have a way with metal, Lensherr,” Wolff says.  “You will enjoy this.”  The Unterschärfuhrer points to where Weisz is crouching over the body of an old man.    He is reaching into the old man's mouth with a pair of pliers and Erik doesn't understand what he is seeing until Weisz's hand jerks and he pulls something free: a shinning gold tooth.  Weisz drops the tooth into a box and moves on to the next victim.  “Get to work, Lensherr,”  Unterschärfuhrer Wolff says, and he turns to go, stepping fastidiously over the puddle of Erik's vomit.  “And clean up this filth.”

 

 

“Some men can't take it,” Weisz tells Erik later in the showers.  These are not the men's facilities that Erik knows.  The showers for the Sonderkommando are in the Gypsy camp, probably because the guards don't want them talking with their fellow prisoners.  Erik feels as if the smell of death and the sweet antiseptic smell of the sauna is imbued into his very pores, and he scrubs himself nearly raw. 

“Székely couldn't take it,” Weisz says.  “Not in the end.  It's worse now.  There are so many, the ovens can't even keep up, so we dug pits.  You must have seen the smoke.  You can see the fires even from here.  Székely said he couldn't do it anymore.  He went to the fence, and we burned his body, too.  He was a good friend.”  Weisz's tone is bleak.  There is no accusation in it, no resentment for the fact that Erik is here and his friend is not.  It is what it is.

They dress slowly in silence, each sinking into his own thoughts, until the guard comes in and shouts at them for dawdling.  On the way back to the barracks, Erik looks for Magda, but he doesn't see her.


	2. Chapter 2

It is nearly a week before Erik is called back to Doktor Schmidt's office, but it feels like years have passed.  Erik almost felt as though the doctor had forgotten him, and he is ashamed at the relief and the gratitude he feels when the kapo brings him the doctor's summons.

Erik had expected the doctor to have some new challenge for him, some new area of experimentation, but not so.  It is more pointless puzzles – things Erik can do in his sleep by now.  He runs a steel ball through a maze, manipulates wires to make a series of little bulbs light up in sequence.  He unloads the doctor's P08 Luger, takes it apart, puts it back together and reloads it all in under two minutes.  The doctor seems to sense Erik's frustration and confusion, because he gives Erik a fatherly smile.  “It's good to see you haven't lost your touch,” he says.  “Tell me, Erik, how are you finding your new responsibilities?” 

Erik presses his lips together tightly, but he can't stop the words from coming out, even as he hates himself for saying them.  “I want to come back,” he says.  “Please, I... I want to come back.”

Doktor Schmidt makes a moue of regret.  “We all have our jobs to do,” he replies.

“I can't,” Erik speaks through gritted teeth.  “I can't do it.  Please...  I'll do whatever job you want, but please...  I can't stand it.”

“Erik...” the doctor says and his gaze is piercingly direct.  “War is always ugly.  I do understand, but you must understand yourself; these people... they're nothing.  They mean nothing to you.”

“THEY'RE _MY_ PEOPLE!” Erik shouts, and the Luger is in his hand.  He doesn't remember picking it up.  He doesn't know if he even did, or if the gun came to him, drawn by the strength of his will, but he is holding it and it is pointed at the doctor's head.

“What are you going to do with that?” Doktor Schmidt asks.  His voice is completely calm, unwavering, despite the fact that he knows for a certainty that the gun is loaded.  Erik's hand is trembling, but at this range there is no way he can possibly miss.  As Erik sights down the barrel, he is filled with the knowledge that this is the gun that, in the doctor's hand, had killed his mother.

“Erik, put down the – ”

The sound of the shot is deafening in the small room.  Erik's ears are ringing, and there is something wrong with his vision.  The doctor... there appears to be more than one of him, shifting and overlapping like rings rippling out from a stone thrown into still water.  The bullet falls harmlessly onto the desk, and the doctor looks at Erik, looks at the smoking gun in his hand.  “You disappoint me, Erik,” he says with an air of real regret, and Erik is stunned.  He doesn't move when the doctor reaches across the desk, not for the gun, but for Erik's hand.  His fingers close lightly around Erik's wrist, and a lance of pain shoots up Erik's arm.  The gun  slips from his hand as his fingers refuse to hold it.  The door bursts open, and there are two armed guards there, drawn by the sound of the shot, but the doctor dismisses them with a curt word and not a glance in their direction.

“You see, we're different, you and I,” Doktor Schmidt continues in a calm tone.  The bones of Erik's wrist grind together under the doctor's grip, and Erik knows they're broken.  “I told you before, I'm not like these Nazis.  Their petty quest for 'purity' means nothing to me, because there is something more pure than them, more perfect.  That is us, Erik: you and me and others like us.  We are the true master race.  Everything that you have seen and everything that you have done here should have taught you that truth.”

The doctor releases his grip and Erik stumbles back, pulling his injured wrist protectively against his chest.  When he had shot the doctor, he had accepted the fact that he would be killed.  In that moment, it hadn't mattered to him so long as he could take the man with him.  But the doctor is alive.  Impossibly, the doctor is alive, and Erik is too, and he is being let go.

“I don't understand,” Erik says.

Doktor Schmidt takes the Luger and puts it back in its place in the top right drawer of his desk.  “You will.”

 

 

The infirmary hardly deserves its name.  It is always overcrowded, and for most of the people there, nothing could be done even if they were properly supplied, which they never are.  But Erik has no choice.  He can't work with only one hand.

“I don't have anything for the pain.  I'm sorry,” the nurse says when she examines Erik's wrist and confirms what he already knew.  It is broken.

“I don't care,” Erik says.  “I just need to be able to use it.”

“You really shouldn't,” the nurse says, but she knows as well as he does that that isn't an option.  “At least I think the bone is just cracked and not broken clean through.  I'll see what I can do,” she says with a troubled frown, and she bustles away.

Erik waits.  He doesn't look around.  He sees enough misery without seeking it out.  The man lying on the cot next to him looks like a collection of gnarled sticks that someone has clumsily bound together in the shape of a human being.  His sunken eyes are half open and staring at nothing.  _Muselmann_ , Erik thinks, and he looks away.

“It's you,” Erik hears someone say, and he turns his head.

“It _is_ you.  Nurse Schulman said that you broke your wrist.  How did it happen?”

Erik is surprised to see Magda standing in front of him.  He recognizes her bright red kerchief and her clear hazel eyes, and then he remembers that she told him that she works in the infirmary.  It takes him another moment to realize that she has asked him a question, and he shrugs it off.  “Accident,” he says evasively.  He can't tell her the doctor's secret.  The truth is unbelievable even to him.  He holds still while Magda splints his wrist and begins to wrap it tightly with strips of fabric that look like they have been torn from a bedsheet.

“I saw you going into the showers,” she says, her voice dropping a little even though they are very close to each other.

“I didn't see you,” Erik replies, though he remembers looking.

“I tried to wait for you, but a guard came and I had to leave,” Magda explains.  Erik feels a curious sort of regret to think that she had been close by the whole time while he was talking with Weisz.  “I'm sorry,” he says, though he doesn't know why.  It's not as though he can make anything different.

For some reason, Magda smiles.  It is a very small smile, and a little sad, but it is a smile nevertheless.  “You know, you never told me your name,” she says.

“Erik,” he answers.  “It's Erik.”

“Erik.”  Magda repeats the name as though she is committing the sound and the shape of it to memory.  “Erik.  It's a nice name.”  She ties off the ends of the makeshift bandage and her fingers linger on the back of his hand, barely touching, but not pulling away.

“I have to go,” Erik says; if he is late getting back to the barracks, his whole unit might be punished, but he hesitates.

“You should come back in a few days,” Magda suggests.  “To check the bandage, I mean,” she adds, which is an entirely valid reason.

Erik is surprised to find himself smiling back.  “I will,” he says.

 

**************************

 

The work continues.  There is a system among the Sonderkommando, Erik learns.  All of them, without exception, are thieves.  At first, Erik is disgusted to watch the men pick over the victims' belongings like buzzards picking at a corpse, but dignity - that of the dead and his own - is a luxury that a prisoner can ill-afford, and Erik's distaste quickly gives way to ruthless practicality like all the others. Better them than the Nazis, he tells himself. The guards don't care if they take food or cigarettes or shoes for themselves.  They look the other way.  But a watch, a necklace, a candlestick – these things are valuable.  These things can be traded for special favours from the right guards.  It's dangerous.  Steal something too big, get caught, and you'll be punished or even killed, but Erik has an advantage.  He can tell when a loaf of bread has a gold ring hidden inside it.  He can tell when there are coins sewn into the hem of a jacket or slipped under the sole of a shoe.  Weisz calls him "the little magpie".  It becomes a joke among the guards - that the little magpie can find a gold coin in a pile of shit - and they laugh scornfully.  Money-grubbing Jew, they call him, but they take his bribes gladly enough.

Erik's wrist heals slowly.  He visits Magda in the infirmary, and at other times he is able to bribe a guard with a gold filling or a few coins to look the other way while they meet at the fence.  He slips her packages of bread and cheese or a bit of dry sausage, remembering how she had tried to do the same even though she had little to spare.  Magda doesn't talk about it, but the rumours he hears say that things are bad in the Gypsy camp, now, and getting worse.  Typhus is spreading out of control.  The guards have already quarantined and burned an entire barrack.  There's been talk of liquidation. 

“They tried that already,” Magda scoffs when Erik brings it up.  “Our men stood up and fought and the SS walked away.”

“For now,” Erik says, but he knows it won't last.  It can't last.  Hammers and shovels and homemade knives won't hold them off forever.

They don't talk about it anymore.  Erik reaches through the fence and they hold hands.  She doesn't notice the way the electrified wires seem to bend away from Erik's arm.

 

**************************

 

“Your little outburst got me thinking,” Doktor Schmidt says the next time Erik is in his office.  It is the first and only mention that has been made of Erik's failed attempt on the doctor's life, and Erik is instantly on guard.  After days, after weeks when no reprisal had come, Erik had allowed himself to think that just maybe it would be forgotten, but he should have known better.  That isn't the way that Schmidt works.

The doctor has taken the gun from his desk drawer, and he raises it now casually, pointing it at Erik's chest.  “If I were to pull the trigger, Erik, do you think you could stop the bullet?” the doctor asks in a tone of bland academic interest.  Their positions are reversed, and Erik tries to resign himself to the inevitable shot, but he is not.  The power of his fear is almost exhilarating, life-affirming.  He _wants_ to live.

“Shall we test it?” Doktor Schmidt says, and he chambers a round.

 _No_ , Erik thinks.  He can feel the minute movement of the metal as the doctor tenses his finger on the trigger.  _No. No. No._

_NO!_

The gun is ripped from the doctor's grip and thrown halfway across the room, striking a metal filing cabinet hard enough to leave a dent, but it doesn't go off.  The doctor, shaking out his hand, looks at Erik in displeasure.  “Your reflexes are as quick as ever, I see, but that isn't what I asked you to do.”  He nods towards the Luger where it has fallen on the floor.  “Pick it up,” he says, and when Erik moves to retrieve it, he says sharply, “Not like that!” so, sitting down again, Erik reaches out with his power and takes hold of the gun, lifting it and settling it back gently on the desk with only the softest thump.

“I know you can move the gun,” the doctor says.  “That's child's play.  But a bullet?  Do you know how much force is behind a bullet when it fires, Erik?  If you could stop _that_... well, that truly would be impressive.  What do you say, Erik?  Can you do it?”

“Yes,” Erik replies because he knows it is the only acceptable answer.

“Such confidence!” the doctor smiles as though Erik's forced compliance has somehow made him proud.  Erik isn't confident.  He's desperate.  He goes to stand in the middle of the room as he's ordered.  This will either be a success or an execution.  Only the next few minutes will tell which.

As it turns out, it is neither.  The doctor's first shot goes wide when, in a panic, Erik pulls off his aim just as he pulls the trigger.  “The bullet, Erik, not the gun,” the doctor repeats pointedly, and he fires again.  Erik throws up his hands in a protective motion and the bullet appears to ricochet off of thin air, burying itself instead harmlessly in the wall.  The next three shots are the same, and Erik manages to shatter a vase deflecting one.  He is breathing hard, his entire body tensed.  He isn't sure how much longer he can do this.  It hardly seems possible that he has managed even this much on pure instinct and probably a good bit of luck, but the doctor is frowning in annoyance.

“Yet again, you didn't do as I asked,” he says, his tone clipped and impatient.  “I told you to _stop_ the bullets, not to deflect them.  You've never been a slow learner, Erik.  Could it be that you are not sufficiently motivated?”

Erik doesn't know what greater motivation he could have than being shot at, but he is afraid to find out.  “No, Herr Doktor.  I'm sorry, Herr Doktor.  I'll try harder,” he says even though he knows it is useless, even though the doctor is already ringing the bell that will bring the guards and whatever nasty surprise the doctor has in store for him.  Erik lives in dread of that little bell.  A moment later, the guards come in, marching someone between them.  Erik sees the bright red kerchief, and his stomach knots.  Magda looks up at him with large, frightened eyes. 

“No...” Erik says.  He is not even sure he has spoken.  The thought fills his head.

“Did you think I didn't know?” Doktor Schmidt says mildly as though Erik is a foolish child who has been caught sneaking sweets.

“No.  No, please...” Erik whispers.  “Please.  Please.”

“You know how this works, Erik,” Schmidt says.  “You remember, don't you?”

 _Alles ist gut_.

“Oh, God...”  Erik says.  “Oh, _God_.”  He has never once called out to God - not when his family was taken from their home in the middle of the night; not when he walked through the stark gates of this hellish place; not when his mother was murdered in this very room – but he can't go through it again.  He can't lose anyone else.  He can't.

The doctor raises the gun.  “Stop the bullet, Erik, and everything will be alright.”

“It's okay,” Magda says.  Her eyes are full of tears.  She is going to die without even understanding why, but still she tells him, “It's okay.”

The gun fires, and Erik thinks, _Not again_.  It is a cool and rational thought.  _This will not happen._   He will not let this happen.  He feels the bullet burn through the air, and it suddenly seems as if he has all the time in the world, as if it would be the simplest matter to just reach out his hand and stop it.  He raises his arm and it is like moving through water.  The air is heavy, charged, and it moves out from him like an invisible wave.  The guards are thrown back.  Erik hears the doctor cry out, but it doesn't matter.  Nothing matters except that Magda is standing unharmed and the bullet has stopped, suspended in mid-air, a hand's breadth from her heart.  She stares at it with wonder and incomprehension.  She raises a tentative hand towards it as though there is some trick, invisible to her eyes, which touch will reveal to her, but as she does, Erik's focus breaks with the rush of incredible relief and the bullet drops to the floor, rolling a little distance.

“So, it seems you've learned after all,” Doktor Schmidt says.  The Luger in his hand is useless.  It is twisted and melted.  It looks as if it has exploded outward from some powerful internal force, and Erik knows that it is only the doctor's own strange power that saved him from Erik's.  The doctor knows it too.  “Well done,” he says.  Erik only stares mutely at Magda.  He wants to go to her.  He wants to ask her if she is alright.  He wants to apologize for all the things he hasn't told her, but he is afraid to move.  He is afraid that she will recoil from him now that she knows he is a monster.  The doctor looks on with comprehension and cruel amusement in his eyes, and he says, “You can take your little friend back to the infirmary, Erik.  I think we're finished for today.”

 

 

Erik walks with Magda back towards the Gypsy camp.  The silence between them drags on, growing heavier and heavier until Erik is afraid to break it.  It is Magda who finally speaks first when they are within sight of the infirmary.  “What happened back there...  You...  It was you who stopped that bullet, wasn't it?” she asks, and though it is expected, Erik braces himself for the revulsion that is sure to follow.  “Yes,” he answers plainly, determined to face it, but the reaction he is waiting for doesn't come.  There is no reaction at all but more silence.  It continues for several more paces and Erik can tell that Magda is thinking deeply, and he wishes that he could know what is going through her mind right now.

Magda slows her pace, and Erik stops when she does.  At length, she says, “I don't know how you did it...”

“Magda, I – ” Erik begins to say, but she cuts him off with a gentle hand on his arm.

“I don't know how you did it, and I don't need to know,” she says.  “What I do know is that you saved my life today.  However it happened, you saved my life.  Erik...” 

She takes half a step towards him, and before he realizes what is happening, her arms are flung around his neck and her lips pressed to the corner of his mouth.  His arms close around her reflexively.  It is clumsy and awkward.  They are both so thin, but she is warm and alive under his hands.  He feels the wetness of tears on his cheek, and he isn't sure if they are hers or his own.

It is over almost as soon as it begins.  Magda pulls away from him, but the electric tingle of her touch lingers like a ghost of warmth on his skin.  “You should get back,” she says, the words hurried and flustered.  “I can go the rest of the way myself.”

“Okay,” Eriks says.  Magda turns to go, and Erik watches her until she reaches the infirmary.  In the doorway, she looks back and sees him standing there, and she waves once, shyly, before ducking inside.

Erik walks all the way back to the barracks with a smile on his face.

 

 

Erik is still smiling when he climbs the attic stairs.  Weisz, Zerkovitz, Kalman, and Glasz are there, and they break apart when Erik comes into the room.  It is always like this.  Conversations stop.  He is the outsider, the German.  Erik doesn't even have the energy to be angry about it anymore.  Suspicion has become second nature to all of them.  Weisz, at least, is civil - even friendly - ever since Erik slipped him a pair of ruby earrings to pay the Unterscharführer for arranging a work transfer for his wife in the women's camp.   He's heard she has a factory position now.  Better conditions.  Better food.

Weisz shakes his head half fondly and half in exasperation when he sees Erik.  “Off with your girl again, were you?” he asks, not really expecting an answer.  He isn't disappointed.  It's no secret among the men that Lensherr has a girl in the Gypsy camp, but he doesn't talk about her, and they've all mostly given up asking even in teasing.  Erik comes and goes often, and there is never any explanation given.  Only the sinister mention of the doctor's name.  There is a lot Erik doesn't talk about, but privacy is so scarce here that the men have learned not to push, not to pry into each others' interior worlds. 

“Well, he won't have something to smile about for much longer,” Glasz remarks casually from where he is lounging by the tiny window, smoking a cigarette.  “Word is, they're liquidating the Gypsy camp at the end of the month.”

“What?”  The smile melts from Erik's face as if it had never been there.  “Where did you hear that?” he demands sharply, but Glasz only shrugs and says, “Around.”

Erik had heard the rumours, but he had thought there would be more time. “I have to warn her,” he says, “I have to – ”

“Do what?” Glasz interrupts derisively.  “What can you do?  Don't be an idiot, Lensherr.  She's as good as dead already.  Wait just a little longer, and you won't have to pay off the guards to see her.  She'll come to us.”

Erik knows that Glasz is right, but it is a possibility he will not - he _can_ not - allow himself to consider.  “Shut up!” Erik spits, grabbing Glasz by the front of his shirt and draging him to the floor.  Glasz is so surprised that all he can do is go down, and Erik straddles the man's prone body and slams his face into the floor repeatedly.  “Shut up!  Shut up!  Shut up!” Erik screams, and all he can think of is how much he wants to break Glasz's smirking mouth for taunting him with his helplessness.

Hard hands grab hold of him and pull him off of Glasz.  Zerkovitz, Weisz, and Kalman hold Erik back while he twists and struggles to free himself, but he can't shake off three men.  Glasz staggers to his feet.  His face is a mask of blood.  “What the hell is wrong with you, Lensherr?” he slurs angrily, but Weisz snaps back, “You damn well deserved what you got, Glasz.  Now go clean yourself up before the kapo comes up here asking questions.”

Glasz gives Erik a dark look and spits blood from his split lip, but he does as he's told.  The others wait until he's gone to let go of Erik.  “Are you done?” Weisz asks him.  Still seething, Erik doesn't answer.  “That was stupid,” Weisz says without pity.  “You aren't going to help her that way.”  He sighs at Erik's continued silence, and he says, “We'll think of something, Lensherr."

Erik expels a harsh breath too angry, too bitter to be called a sigh.  "She doesn't have time for that," he replies flatly.

He sees Weisz hesitate, start to speak: "Listen, Lensherr, there's - " but a sharp  _Hsst!_ from Kalman cuts Weisz short.  Words fire back and forth between the two men like shots, and Erik can't follow.  He doesn't speak Hungarian.

Erik only shakes his head.  Their argument doesn't matter.  Weisz's assurances don't matter.

There is only one thing Erik can do.

 

**************************

 

“You have to save her.”

Erik stands in Doktor Schmidt's office.  He has not been called here.  He has come on his own to make this plea.  For days, Erik has wracked his brain, thinking up and discarding plan after plan with no solution, and the more time that passes, the more clear it becomes to him that there is nothing he can do.  He is faced with the brutal truth that every prisoner knows: the only way out of Auschwitz is through the chimney.  It isn't a plan that he needs.  What he needs is a miracle.

The doctor is his last hope – he is _Magda's_ last hope – and Erik prays that he is not making a mistake.

Seated at his desk, the doctor looks up at Erik with a sort of expectant expression as if he is waiting for Erik to explain himself.  “Save who?” he asks disingenuously as though he doesn't know exactly who Erik means.

“Magda,” Erik says.  “You have to save her.  The camp is going to be liquidated.”

“Ah, the gypsy girl,” Doktor Schmidt says with disinterest.  He brushes fastidiously at some imaginary spot of dirt on his jacket as if the mention of her name has soiled him somehow.

But Erik persists.  “I know you can do it,” he says.  “You did it for me.”  Two years after the fact, Erik knows what it means that he was sent to the left while his mother and father were kept to the right.

“You were a special case,” the doctor replies.  “The Gypsy camp is rife with typhus and small pox.  It's unfortunate, but there really is no choice but to cleanse it or chance infecting the entire complex.  It's a simple matter of risk containment.  Quarantine is only effective when it is absolute.”

“Please.  I'll do anything,” Erik says, not caring that he is reduced to begging the man he most hates.  Not if it will save Magda.

“I'm sorry, Erik,” the doctor answers without pity.

Erik bows his head and he makes a decision.  “Then kill me, too,” he says.

“Don't be ridiculous,” Doktor Schmidt scoffs, but there is a tightness to his expression.  He is uncertain.

“Kill me too, or I'll kill myself,” Erik says, “if you don't save her.”  He is not distraught.  He is not weeping or blustering.  His tone is perfectly reasoned and level.  This is not a threat; it is a promise.  The doctor's lips compress in a thin, unhappy line and Erik can see Schmidt looking at him, trying to judge the sincerity of his claim.  He sees the moment when the doctor realises that it is not a bluff, and he sees the incomprehension in the doctor's eyes.  Why this girl?  Why, after all the death that Erik has seen?  He has no answer.

Finally, Doktor Schmidt says crisply, “In two weeks, there will be a transport of able-bodied workers to a labour camp in Germany.  I will see to it that the girl's number is on the list.  Does that satisfy you?”

“Yes, Herr Doktor,” Erik says, and, “Thank you, Herr Doktor,” though he knows the doctor is anything but pleased.  Doktor Schmidt makes a motion of curt, wordless dismissal, and Erik leaves in a hurry before the doctor has a chance to reconsider.

He goes to Magda right away.  She is on duty, but the urgency of Erik's manner makes nurse Schulman sigh and say with quiet sympathy, “Just a few minutes.”  Erik gives her a pair of silver buttons to bribe the kapo in case he makes trouble, and the nurse slips them into her pocket with a nod of understanding.  When Erik turns to go, she catches his arm just briefly, and she says in a low, hurried voice, “Whatever you've done for her, thank you.  For trying.  For caring.  I pray for you both.”  And before Erik can think of a response, she is moving about her work again as though they have not spoken, leaving Erik to stare after her.

“Erik!” Magda says when she sees him, and she comes up to him, stopping just short with an arrested motion that makes Erik wonder what she would have done if there were not so many eyes on them.  “What are you doing here?  You aren't hurt, are you?” she asks, her smile dissolving into concern.

“No,” Erik says, “but I need to talk to you,” and the conspiratorial urgency of his tone does little to assuage her concern.  Erik takes her by the hands and draws her into a corner.  There is nowhere secluded in the entire room, but the nearby patients appear to be mostly unconscious and it is the best he can manage.  “Listen,” he says quietly,” your camp is going to be liquidated at the end of the month.”

“Erik – ” Magda interrupts because they have talked about this before, but Erik cuts her off.  “It's happening,” he says.  “I heard it from the doctor.  But there's going to be a transport to one of the labour camps.  I've arranged it so that your name will be on the list.  I'm going to get you out of here.”

“The doctor...” Magda says uncertainly as though, somehow, she suspects.

“It's been arranged,” Erik repeats flatly.  He doesn't know what price the doctor will exact from him for this miracle, but he doesn't care.  Whatever it is, he'll pay it gladly.  “It won't be easy, but Magda, you'll be safe.  Just get on that train.  No matter what happens, be on that train.  Promise me.”

Erik grips her hands tightly, and he knows that he is probably hurting her, but she says, “I... I promise.”

“Magda...” Erik says.  It is a sigh of relief.  He pulls her into a tight embrace, feels her arms slip around his waist tentatively.  He holds her like that for what seems like a long time, but is probably less than a minute.  If this is the last time he ever sees her, he wants to remember this feeling.

 

**************************

 

 _Zigeunernacht_. 

 _They can hear the screams from the Gypsy camp.  Gradually, it goes quiet.  The sky is choked with greasy black smoke.  It belches from the chimney of Krema IV in the distance.  The Sonderkommando breathe the dead into their lungs, and Erik is shamefully, selfishly grateful that it is them – the men of Krema IV – and not him, grateful that he doesn't have to look into the faces of the murdered Gypsies and wonder,_ Is this mother? Father? _He is grateful that he doesn't have to search for Magda's face among them.  He prays that she is on a train going far away from this place._


	3. Chapter 3

The Gypsy camp stands empty.  In one night, more than two thousand people... gone.  The fires are still burning in the pits behind the crematorium, and the killing continues apace.  A perpetual pall of smoke hangs over everything. 

“Here,” Weisz says, stuffing something soft and crumpled into Erik's hands on the way back from the sauna.  Erik looks down.  It is a bright red kerchief.

“The Leichenkommando brought it from that nurse in the infirmary.  It looks like your girl got out after all.”

Erik tucks the kerchief carefully under his shirt next to his heart.  “Thank you,” he says to Weisz and, silently, to nurse Schulman for this little scrap of hope.

“The transport left for Buchenwald yesterday,” Doktor Schmidt says when he sees Erik again.  “I've been assured that the girl was on it.”

“Yes, Herr Doktor.  Thank you, Herr Doktor,” Erik replies.  Magda's kerchief is a bright band knotted around his arm, a signal that the doctor has kept his promise, and that Erik intends to keep his.

“Set me as a seal upon your heart, a seal upon your arm,” the doctor remarks, and Erik frowns in confusion.

“What...?”

“The Songs of Songs, isn't it?” Doktor Schmidt says, gesturing towards the scrap of red fabric.  “I'm surprised you don't know it.  You Jews are usually so studious.”

“I... yes, Herr Doktor,” Erik stammers.  _Shir Hashirim_. He does know it, but he has never heard the verses in German before.  It hadn't occurred to him how Doktor Schmidt might misread his simple gesture, and he is afraid that the doctor will think he is being defiant.

“Well, Erik, we had an agreement, you and I, did we not?” the doctor says, steepling his fingers atop the desk.  “I held up my end.”

“Yes, Herr Doktor,” Erik replies, dreading what is to come.

The doctor's smile is coldly predatory.  “Then let's get to work, shall we?”

 

**************************

 

Doktor Schmidt is punishing him.  Erik knows it.  There is no other explanation for the cruel and pointless experiments he is being forced to perform.  He is being punished because he forced a concession from the doctor, and the doctor is reminding him that Erik is entirely at his mercy.  Erik would bear it if it were only that, but the doctor knows him.  He knows that would be no punishment at all.

No.  The doctor is not satisfied to make Erik suffer.  In his hands, Erik is only a tool with which to inflict suffering on others.

In the name of “science”, he has Erik levitate a hundred pound weight above the head of a man who has been pulled from the Strafkommando – to test Erik's endurance, the doctor claims.  The man doesn't understand what is happening, but he looks to Erik with frightened, pleading eyes, silently begging Erik to save him.  Ten minutes pass, twenty, thirty, nearly an hour, but Erik's collapse is inevitable, and when he falls, the weight falls with him.  On his knees on the tiled floor of the doctor's laboratory, Erik can smell the visceral stench of the man's brains leaking from his crushed skull.  Doktor Schmidt makes a dispassionate note.  “Forty-eight minutes,” he says.  “Let's see if you can't last longer next time.”

Erik nearly weeps when, at the next session, the guards bring in a young girl.  She must have been selected from the Kinderblock.  She can't be much older than thirteen or fourteen, and her clear hazel eyes remind Erik painfully of Magda.  Erik recognizes immediately that there is something wrong with her, but he can't put his finger on it until the doctor, seeing Erik's perplexed expression, says, “An injection of ferrous sulfate.  You feel it swimming in her blood, don't you.  I thought you would.”

Erik does.  There is far too much of it - enough to poison her, he realises - but he is enthralled by the slow dance of microscopic particles through her veins.

“Now then, Erik,” Doktor Schmidt says briskly.  “Let's test your control, shall we?  I want you to separate the iron from her blood.”

“What?” Erik blurts out.  He is horrified by the suggestion, but a deeper part of him is even more horrified by the certain knowledge that he can do it.  With the slightest exertion of his will, he could draw those minute specks of metal to himself as simply as a pin being drawn to a magnet.

“You heard me,” the doctor says implacably.  “I don't need to tell you what will happen if you don't.”

Erik looks at the girl.  Pale and thin and waxy-skinned, she is dead already.  Erik can't save her.  He can't even save himself. There is only one that he has given everything to save, and for her sake, he would do anything.

He raises his hand and the girl's body arches.  She is lifted off her feet, hanging crucified in the air like a puppet dangling from its strings.  She gives a terrible shriek, and Erik squeezes his eyes shut, but he forces them open again.  He forces himself to witness the monstrous act he is about to commit.  “I'm sorry.  I'm s-so sorry.”  The word breaks on a sob as a rose of blood blossoms on the front of the girl's smock.  Tears stream down Erik's face unchecked.  _Forgive me.  Please, forgive me_ , he begs silently, but he has no right to ask.  The girl's blood is a mist in the air between them, silvering, coalescing.  Her body falls limply to the floor, the puppet's strings cut, and a perfect sphere of iron floats obediently into Erik's hand.  It is still warm.

“Wonderful!” Doktor Schmidt says avidly.

If this continues, Erik thinks, he will go mad.

 

**************************

 

The Sonderkommando have no rest.  Transports are arriving daily.  Hungarians, Greeks, Czechs – the Nazis seem determined to empty all of Europe, and for the first time, Erik starts to believe that they might do it.  He can't even count how many bodies he has carried with his own hands.  Hundreds?  Thousands?  The work is ghastly, and the only comfort that Erik can take is in knowing that at least these people he did not kill with his own hands.  But what is that worth, really, when he steals the gold from their mouths?

They make endless trips back and forth between the sauna and the Kanada warehouse.  The mountains of shoes, of wigs, of dentures and eyeglasses are a testament to the almost incomprehensible number of lives stolen here.  There is a room just filled with confiscated food, sitting and rotting while, outside, the prisoners starve.

It is too much, Erik thinks, slowing his steps.  He can't take it anymore.  No one can swallow so much sorrow.  He has done what he had to do.  Magda is safe, and she will never know the unspeakable things he did for her sake. He only prays that his mother, wherever her spirit has gone, cannot see what he has become; that she will forgive him for being too weak to avenge her.

Weisz and Kalman, who are pushing a cart piled high with sacks of clothing, stop when they see that Erik has fallen behind.  “Lensherr!” Weisz calls out to him, but Erik ignores him.  He goes towards the fence.

“Lensherr, get back here!”

“Let him go,” Kalman says heavily.  “He's done, Weisz.”

The electric hum of the fence is almost soothing.  Erik can feel it thrumming in his bones.  If he were to reach out, close his hands over the vibrating wire...

“Erik.”

“Erik.”

Erik looks up at the sound of a woman's voice speaking his name.  There are only two women  who know his name, and one of them...

Nurse Schulman is standing on the other side of the fence.  She must have been waiting for Erik, watching and hoping that he would pass this way, because she looks around quickly and comes close.  She has a message for him.  “Magda is back,” she says.  That is all.  Those three terrible words and no explanation.

“Where is she?” Erik demands sharply, all thoughts of the fence instantly erased from his mind.  Magda!  He had thought he would never see her again.  He had _hoped_ he would never see her again.

“In the Gypsy camp,” the nurse says quietly.  “Half the transport died in Buchenwald, and they sent the rest back.  For what, I don't know.  For... for you, I suppose.  Erik, I'm sorry.”

For the ovens, she means.  After everything Erik has done to protect her, after all the unforgivable things he has done because he knew that it would keep Magda safe, it can't end like this.

“Don't be,” Erik says tersely, a desperate plan already formulating in his mind.  “Can you get her to the infirmary?”

Nurse Schulman hesitates.  “I don't know.  There might be a lock-down.”

“Do it,” Erik says.  “Whatever you need, I'll get it for you.  Just make it happen.  Tonight.”

“I-I'll try.”

“Kalman!” Erik calls and the other man jumps at the sudden determination in Erik's voice.  A moment ago, it had seemed like Lensherr had no more fight left in him.  “Give me your watch,” Erik says urgently, coming over to Kalman and holding out his hand.

“Watch?  Lensherr, what are you – ?”

“I know you have a gold watch hidden in your boot, Kalman.  Give it to me.  Now!” Erik cuts off the man's protests impatiently.

Kalman bends down and fishes inside his left boot, and sure enough, he pulls out a man's gold watch.  He holds it out to Erik with wide eyes, and Erik snatches it from him.  “How did you – ?”

Erik doesn't wait for Kalman to finish the question.  He passes the watch through the fence to nurse Schulman and she hides it immediately out of sight.  “Tonight,” Erik repeats, and she nods once before turning and hurrying away.

Erik turns back to see both Weisz and Kalman looking at him with a mixture of confusion and apprehension, but Erik offers no explanation.  “Let's go,” he says, and he bends his back into pushing the cart.

Erik waits anxiously for dark.  “What are you going to do?” Weisz whispers to him as they work.  “Even if you do get her out of there, what then?  There's nowhere to hide.”

“I'll think of something,” Erik answers grimly, and then the guard passes by again and there is no more opportunity for talking.

Weisz and Kalman know something is up, and so the others do, too, but they are all quiet while the SS make their rounds.  “Kalman,” Erik whispers as he pretends to stoop to pick up a  jacket that has fallen from one of the hooks, and he passes Kalman a chunk of rye bread with a diamond ring inside.  “For the watch.”  Kalman knows Erik's tricks and he quickly tucks the bread away in his pocket.  Erik isn't buying Kalman's silence or his compliance; he understands that. Still, there is a debt between them, and Erik pays his debts.

When the last of the bodies have been cleared, they head for the showers.  “Wish me luck,” Erik says to Weisz.  The infirmary is just on the next block, so close that Erik can see it from the door.

“You're going to get us all killed,” Weisz says, but he doesn't try to stop Erik from going.  They are Sonderkommando.  He knows as well as Erik does that they are only on borrowed time, anyway, and maybe – like Erik – he thinks that it is worth it.  It is worth trying to save just one life after all the lives that they have seen ended.

Nurse Schulman is waiting in the infirmary.  “She's here,” she says as soon as she sees Erik, and she takes him to where Magda is lying curled on a cot at the back of the room.  Magda was thin before, but now she is skeletal.  Her hair is nothing but a coarse stubble over the stark contours of her skull, and her bones jut like blades under her sallow skin.  But she is alive.  “Erik...?” she says weakly, and Erik says, “I'm here.  I'm here.”  She half sits up, and Erik helps her the rest of the way, cradling her against his body.  She feels frighteningly fragile, but her smile is warm.  “I knew you'd come,” she says.  She lifts one arm a little and her fingers brush the scrap of red cloth bound around Erik's arm.  She recognizes it.

“I promised I would get you out of here,” Erik says.  “Magda, do you trust me?”

Her eyes are full of questions, but she says, “Yes,” without hesitation.

“Magda... you have to hide in the corpse pile,” Erik tells her, and he sees the horror on her face.

“The corpse pile...?”

“In a little while, the Leichenkommando will come to take the bodies to the crematorium.  They'll take you, too.  Don't be afraid,” Erik says when he feels her tense.  “I'll be waiting for you.  I won't let anything happen to you.  I'm sorry, Magda, but it's the only way.”

“... I understand,” Magda replies quietly, and her voice quavers only a little.

“If something goes wrong... if something happens to me, you can trust Weisz.”  Erik holds her face in his hands, and he kisses her fevered brow.  “I love you,” he says.  He wants to tell her now in case he doesn't get the chance.

Erik picks Magda up and carries her outside to the corpse pile behind the infirmary.  She is so limp, so light, that it is terribly easy to believe that she is dead in his arms.  She is silent and still, barely breathing.  Erik puts her down gently, and he whispers, “I'm sorry,” before pulling the swollen, purpureus body of another woman half on top of Magda to better disguise her.  He can't imagine what it must feel like to have death pressing down on all sides, and he hopes that the Leichenkommando will not dawdle at their work tonight.

They wait.  Erik tries not to think of Magda hidden under a blanket of cold, dead flesh, but he can think of nothing else. He has nurse Schulman re-wrap his cracked wrist.  It has long since ceased to be of any real trouble to him, but it is as good an excuse as any for lingering in the infirmary.  When the Leichenkommando finally arrive, Erik jumps up and all but runs to meet them.  It is Schneidermann's unit, and Erik knows the man.  He has spoken to him before.  His family is from Hamburg.  There are a few whispered words and some cigarettes change hands, and then the bodies are being loaded up.  Erik sees Schneidermann himself lift Magda's body onto the cart – Schneidermann whose face doesn't betray the fact that her body is still warm and pliant.  The walk from the infirmary to the crematorium is agonizing.  It feels as if they are crawling along by inches, and Erik is terrified that, at any moment, something will go wrong; the bodies will be diverted to the pits for burning instead of taken inside, or a guard will stop them and search them for contraband.  Erik keeps thinking it right up until the moment they are inside and the doors have closed behind them.

Only then, when the Leichenkommando have delivered their grisly cargo and departed does Magda stir.  “It's safe,” Erik assures her quietly and she pulls herself free from the corpse pile with his help.  He can feel her shaking with something more than cold.  “It's safe,” he says again.  “You're safe.”

Erik hears footsteps on the stairs, and he whips around to see the kapo, Leibowitz, coming down from the attic to take the bodies to the ovens.  Glasz and Zerkovitz are behind him.  They all see Magda and their faces freeze in shock.  “What – ?” Glasz starts to say, but to Erik's surprise, the kapo snaps, “Shut up!  Everybody back upstairs, now.  You too, Lensherr.”

“I'm not leaving her,” Erik says stubbornly, standing in front of Magda, and Leibowitz replies, “Fine.  Just move, goddamn you, before someone sees.”

They all hurry up the stairs to the attic barracks, and the moment they are gathered in that relative safety, the kapo rounds angrily on Erik.  “I don't know what in hell you think you're doing, Lensherr, but you picked a hell of a time to do it.”

“What was I suppose to do?  Let her die?” Erik retorts.

“Is that her?” Weisz asks.  He is standing by the tiny window looking out towards Krema IV.

“Her?  Who 'her'?” Zerkovitz says, and the kapo answers, “Lensherr's gypsy girl,” with a tone of disgust, not for Magda herself, but for the trouble she has unwittingly caused. "You knew about this, did you?" The last is for Weisz who only shrugs.

“Well, congratulations, Lensherr.  You saved her,” Glasz says with deep disdain.  “Now she can die with the rest of us.”  He too has gone to stand by the window, and he and Weisz take turns keeping watch.

“What are you talking about?  What's going on?” Erik demands.  At this hour, the barracks should be mostly empty, most of these men at work, not gathered here.

“What's going on is our number is up. Right now the SS are getting ready to execute the men at Krema IV, and then it will be our turn,” Glasz answers acidly.  “Where's the damn _signal_?” he says not to Erik, but to the smoke-filled sky over the crematorium.

“Signal?” Erik says, and the kapo nods.  “The signal was supposed to come from Krema IV,” Leibowitz says after a moment's hesitation wherein he meets the eyes of the other men.  “The signal to revolt.”

“Revolt?  Against the SS?  That's crazy!” Erik replies, but the kapo says, “It's all been arranged.  We've been planning it for months, stashing grenades, bullets – whatever we could get our hands on.  This was supposed to be our chance...”

“... and then you had to go and do something stupid, Lensherr,” Glasz adds.

“But why didn't you tell me?” Erik exclaims.  “If I had known, I could have helped!  I could have – ”

“We didn't know if we could trust you,” Weisz says, his tone slightly apologetic but frank.  “You were never really one of us.  You would go off with that doctor...”

“... doing God knows what,” Kalman finishes.  “What were we supposed to think?”

What, indeed.  It seems that Erik is not the only one who has been keeping secrets, and he cannot blame these men for not trusting him when he never trusted them with the truth.  It's true, he has never thought of them as his fellows. Doktor Schmidt's words come back to him: _These people mean nothing to you_ , and Erik feels a surge of deep shame and anger that, ultimately, the doctor had been right about him. “Think what you want,” he says without rancour, “but I'm here now, and if there is going to be a fight, then I'm going to fight with you.  I'm tired and I'm _sick_ of standing by and doing nothing.”

“What about her?” Zerkovitz asks, jerking a thumb at Magda who has been at the centre of this discussion.  “I can fight, too,” she says, but the suggestion is ludicrous.  It was all she could do to climb the stairs to get up here.

“She's going to have to,” Leibowitz says.  “No one sits this one out.  Either we break out, or we die trying, because after this, they're going to kill us all anyway.”

“What have we got?” Erik asks, and the kapo shows him.  “Three hand guns, maybe a dozen bullets, and these...”  From a hole in the ceiling, he removes what looks like a homemade grenade cobbled together from a salvaged food tin.  “Gun power,” Leibowitz says.  “The women were smuggling it to us from the metalworks until they got caught.”

“That's all?” Erik says.  “Will it be enough?” But even so, he is impressed at the daring of the plan, as crazy as it is. He is amazed at what they have managed to accomplish not only under the noses of the guards, but under his. There is so much metal hidden around the room that Erik had long since stopped noticing it. Clearly, he should have been paying more attention.

“It will have to be,” the kapo replies.  “We're ready.  Once the signal – ”

The sound of an explosion drowns out the kapo's next words, and Glasz and Weisz reel back from the window.  “Krema IV!”  Weisz exclaims.  “My God, it's burning!”

“Is that it?  Is that the signal?”

Already, there are sirens wailing throughout the camp.  The revolt has begun.

“Go!  GO!” the kapo shouts, and the Sonderkommando grab up their stolen and improvised weapons.

Erik has none, but he needs none.  Erik _is_ a weapon.

They rush into the courtyard of Krema II, and the guards are already arriving, pouring out of trucks with their rifles ready.  Erik sees men drop all around him, but he keeps running, half dragging Magda behind him when she can't quite keep up.  He sends the SS bullets back at the men who fire them.  The fence is just ahead, and beyond it the woods and safety.  So close!  Erik reaches out with his power, with his terror and his rage, and he is not a child any longer, grappling with a force he doesn't understand.  The barbed wire rips apart under that force like streamers of insubstantial crepe. The unsprung coils, like writhing serpents, lash out and ensnare the nearest guards in their cruel, strangling grip.

The prisoners flood out through the gap Erik has made and scatter in all directions.  Erik plunges under the cover of the trees, pale yellow and ghostly white.  He can see other men on either side of him, he can hear them moving through the sparse undergrowth, but he doesn't stop to look.  He doesn't call out to any of them.  He can't think about Weisz or Kalman or Leibowitz.  When Magda stumbles, Erik scoops her up in his arms and keeps running.

 

The camp is behind him.  The doctor is behind him.

Ahead of him, there is freedom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The quotation in the summary comes from "Magneto: Testament". These are the last words that Jakob Eisenhardt speaks to his son who will later become Magneto.
> 
> In writing the story of how Erik and Magda might have met in the "X-Men: First Class" continuity, I didn't want to stray too far from their established comic-verse history, namely because the story told in "Magneto: Testament", while fictional, closely parallels the life experiences of real men and women who were the victims of Nazi crimes. Instead, I tried to think how Erik's involvement with the sadistic Doktor Schmidt might have altered events.
> 
> It was necessary to fiddle a little with the timeline of "X-Men: First Class" in order to merge it with comics canon and historical facts. In this story, Erik arrives in Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1942 as he did in the comics - earlier than in the film - at which time I put his age at around thirteen years old. The events in this story take place in 1944.
> 
> This work is un-beta'd.


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